Once the protagonists of "The Dreamers," Matthew, Isabelle, and Theo lose access to the "Cinematheque Francaise," they become even further cut off from the reality beyond the apartment. In fact, nearly the whole film is shot within the magical rooms and tight corridors of the family apartment, and it is within these same spatial bounds that the trio creates their own fantastical cinematic world. Especially old American films comprise the currency that they exchange throughout the film via their imitations (i.e. Scene 7) and games ((i.e. Scene 10) throughout the spring. They slip (or, in their own eyes, transcend) further and further into the sublime of film, bringing the idealism and unreality of the film world into their own: uninhibited love, eating, sex, play, etc.
[...] Scenes such as this combine with the larger social context of the 1968 France, being the student film protests, the May riots, Vietnam and Algeria. Though all three characters begin with some social insertion, aware of the film banning and focused on politics, their departure into the sheltered, childlike world of the family apartment is inversely related to their own social activism. Even in moments when Theo and Matthew begin to discuss and argue politics or the larger world going on outside apartment doors (Vietnam, Mao, etc), they are quick to drop the subject with their own violent brawling, the appearance of Isabelle, or any other distractions within the apartment. [...]
[...] Yet, the film does not end with the characters slipping off deeper into their romantic oblivion, instead the larger world comes (literally) crashing in on them. Just as the US loses its innocence in Vietnam, and France equally in Algeria, the innocence and idealism that the trio had tried to preserve and reinforce breaks open along the same fault lines highlighted throughout the film when the revolutionaries in the streets throw the brick through the apartment window and thus summon them to the larger world (Scene 25). [...]
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